News On Laptops For Education

AdamWill notes a Mandriva press release with the news that the government of Nigeria has selected Intel-powered classmate PCs running Mandriva Linux for educational use in a nationwide pilot. About 17,000 machines will be involved at first. We can only wonder at the maneuvering and negotiations that went on with the OLPC project. The latter had its first announced order for 100,000 XO machines, from Uruguay, with a potential for 400,000 over time. The bigger news out of OLPC is that Microsoft is porting XP to the platform, and chairman Nicholas Negroponte says that's fine with him: "It would be hard for OLPC to say it was 'open' and then be closed to Microsoft. Open means open."

OLPC open?

[the_brobdingnagian]

The OLPC is suppost to be completely open and user maintainable. But the wireless drivers are blobs. From the OLPC "Core principles"

There is no inherent external dependency in being able to localize software into their language, fix the software to remove bugs, and repurpose the software to fit their needs. Nor is there any restriction in regard to redistribution; OLPC cannot know and should not control how the tools we create will be re-purposed in the future.

I like the project, but I wish they could stick to their core principle. I would really like a completely open computer, especially such a cool looking, low power, rugged laptop.

Free and Open Environment

[Anonymous Coward]

From the OLPC Wiki (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Core_principles/lang-en) -- "Give me a free and open environment and I will learn and teach with joy."

Sounds good, but wait ...

"It would be hard for OLPC to say it was 'open' and then be closed to Microsoft. Open means open."

So you're open to the idea of making the OLPC closed? Well done! I'm not sure what the heck OLPC is about anymore. At first it seemed great, then the price went up, they chose a non-open manufacturer for their network chip, and now Windows? Give me a break. I bet they'll use "the children" as an excuse for their actions this time aswell.

Negroponte is doing the world a favor

[zappepcs]

On the one hand, the OLPC is open, so let MS port their OS. On the other hand, the chances the MS will port any of the bloated MS products to work well on the OLPC will convince a great many people that MS OS products are not necessarily the thing that they *MUST* have to be relevant in the world of computing.

I would have thought that Windows CE would be the better choice for the OLPC. XP??? What are they thinking?

Sure, it might be possible, but it is a move that is so far in the opposite direction of where MS products have been going you have to ask yourself if it is a joke? Even with their flagship OS, the latest great update has been the kind of success that you wish on your competition. How in the hell are they going to make XP fit on the OLPC? It's performance has not been lauded around the world as THE shining example of how an OS should work on a laptop.

Classmate PC

[Woek]

When I looked into the Classmate PC I read on Intel's site:

Developed to address gaps in education found by Intel's extensive ethnographic research,...

Riiiight... It has nothing to do with the positive response on the OLPC project.

Re:I have a bad feeling about this

[kingduct]

In a serious sense, even were the OLPC (or the Intel machine in this arcile) what was needed to improve education in the third world, the reality is that I highly doubt the distribution will ever be fair.

Having lived in a poor country myself for a number of years, I suspect that some member of the ruling oligarchy (which controls a party as well as controlling much of business) in most countries will end up becoming the "importer" and in order to "recover costs" and "include taxes" and "shipping and handling", will find that the poorest people should buy one for 600 dollars, which will still be much less than other cheap laptops there are.

People will be offered microcredits to buy them for their children (maybe they will be required to do so), and will do so, because they think this cute little machine will advance them into the future. Of course, the wealthy friends of the oligarchs will get them for free. In the meantime, the end result will be a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

Now, some of you will say, "No! There are protections to do that. These things are set up to avoid that." However, "transparency" is just a word that the systematically corrupt trot out -- when third world leaders/governments/systems claim to be transparent, you know that they just stole money. I know this is a pessimistic post, but it is based on a lot of experience. I hope that places like Uruguay are slightly better on this issue -- certainly better than most of Latin America, but I have little doubt that that is what will happen in Nigeria.

The money made will truly end up in some bank account. The Americans who will benefit are the stakeholders in the factories designing and producing these things, and poor Nigerians will still be poor, and no better educated.

Re:Open

[Anonymous Coward]

The XO specs and price were not doubled to support Windows. You are probably referring to the addition of the SD card slot, which Negroponte likes to say was added just for Microsoft (as in one of the articles). At that point in the design process, the laptop was already costing over $130. The increase to the current $190 is partly due to further changes in design and partly due to the precipitous fall of the dollar.

As for the real motivations behind the SD slot, here is what Walter Bender [laptop.org] had to say:

...the first-hand history of why there is an SD-card slot on the machine is: (1) We needed to add an ASIC to improve NAND access; (2) We took this as an opportunity to add a video camera contoller at minimal additional cost; (3) At essentially no additional cost, we added an SD-card slot to give the kids more options re storing their videos (at the time, we were only planning on .5G of on-board NAND. While it is probably a cleaner solution for MS to take advantage of SD rather than USB, there was not and still is not room on-board for Windows and there has been from Day One external expansion capability.

Re:Why not Vista??

[jollyreaper]

I'll probably get mod'ed flamebait or something, but I think it's really telling that Microsoft isn't attempting to create a software load based on Windows Vista as the starting point. And they have already stopped retailing XP... and though they prolonged XP OEM sales, it's still set to be cut off in a relatively short time.

You're not serious, are you? I was all set to post a joke about "Yeah, I'm not impressed; port Vista, then I'll be impressed." These laptops are severely underpowered by today's standards; bear in mind that today's software is bloated and requires such overpowering. The OLPC machines are more like PDA's on steroids than laptops as we think of them -- but that's a good thing, because today's PDA's are pretty powerful. I have a Palm Tungsten that's great for word processing if I hook it up to the external IR keyboard. No hard drive, simple display, long battery life, what's to hate? I can play a frickin' Command and Conquer clone complete with digital sound effects. And this is all on a PDA that's a few years old. And you all know how powerful the Nintendo DS is for a handheld. My Blackberry is just as capable as the desktop I had ten years ago. The only limitation is the screen size. OLPC runs a stripped down OS, no fluff and no cruft, that's how they can use a low horsepower machine with extended battery life, low cost, and high durability.

I would be very surprised if they got XP running on that thing. Vista? Unthinkable. I would have expected some manner of Windows CE port.